Monday, August 17, 2015

Like Gorbachev, Putin Said Ready to Violate Ethnic Quota System in Non-Russian Areas

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 17 – A few months
before he became the leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev declared that
competence rather than ethnicity should be the basis of all appointments, a
principle that he applied in Kazakhstan in December 1986 when he replaced the
ethnic Kazakh Dinmukhamed Kunayev with the ethnic Russian Gennady Kolbin.

Gorbachev’s “ethnically blind”
approach was praised by some in Moscow and the West as an indication that he
would modernize his country, but it had the effect of calling into question the
understandings of non-Russians about who was to get what and thus sparked a
wave of nationalism within the elites of the union republics.

That elite nationalism in many cases
joined up with the nationalism of cultural elites and larger groups of the
titular nationalities in those republics; and it contributed to the desire of
many who had never thought about the exit of their republics from the USSR to
focus on and pursue that goal.

Now, there are indications that
Vladimir Putin is about to pursue something similar in the North Caucasus,
elevating competence over ethnicity in the selection of cadres for key
posts.If he does so, the response will
be even more dramatic because if Gorbachev was seen as a Soviet official, Putin
is clearly viewed as an ethnic Russian one.

Consequently, many among the elites in
the North Caucasus will view what he does in that regard as the latest form of
Russian nationalism and imperialism; and they will likely be even more willing
to join forces with anti-Russian groups in the population, thus destabilizing
Moscow’s position there.

Khalatyan
discusses the demand of Kumyks in Daghestan that one of their community be
named mayor of Makachkala, something they say will “serve to restore history justice
and stabilize the social-political situation in the republic” given their
growth in numbers in recent years.

But the Armenian
analyst says, “the appointment to a post on the basis of ethnic membership and
not personal qualities hardly correspondents to Russian law and could elicit surprise
in many other Russian regions” which may not want to see a Daghestani style “system
of unwritten agreements and national quotas” be applied to them.

In the
last decades of Soviet power, Khalatyan points out, the leading posts in
Daghestan were handed out to representatives of the three largest peoples, the
Avars, the Dargins and the Kumyks. After the USSR came apart, “the Kremlin
closed its eyes to such practices;” and they continued, thus allowing the
leaders of each to establish clans that really ran the republic.

After the
murders of leaders of other ethnic groups there in 2000 and 2003, the other
nationalities were frozen out almost entirely from the top positions, something
that infuriated them and contributed to administrative and political problems
in the republic as a whole, the Armenian analyst says.

He then
reports the following: “in the opinion of a number of experts on the North
Caucasus, notions about the importance of the ethnic factor in the structure of
the Daghestani elite now are too exaggerated.”

Konstantin
Kasenin, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Economics and State Service and
a Kremlin advisor, says that the alliances leaders form are invariably “multi-national”
and thus ethnicity matters less. Moreover, the population doesn’t care about
this system as much as the leaders do. They are more animated by Islam than
ethnicity.

And
consequently, the Moscow-based scholar argues, “ending the practice of making
appointments to senior positions in the republic on the basis of nationality
will not generate a serious negative reaction in Daghestani society.”

Mairbek
Agayev, the editor of Daghestan’s “Chernovik” newspaper agrees and says that “the
population has distanced itself from the observation of this parity.”He adds that only by challenging the ethnic quota
system can Moscow hope to shake up the situation, gain control, and integrate
the region in Russia as a whole.

Khalatyan
clearly agrees. He notes that “in recent years, the federal authorities have
adopted a course of naming as heads of the republics of the North Caucasus,
siloviki connected with the federal center.” These people were the right
ethnicity, but they were not linked to the clans in the republic capitals.

Moscow
even named a security forces type, Lt.Gen. Sergey Melikov of the Internal
Troops, to head the North Caucasus Federal District.And there are rumors, Khalatyan says, that
Melikov may be appointed to be the head of Daghestan. He is a Lezgin, and his
appointment would shake up the ethnic quota system that has existed there for
decades.

One can
only agree with Khalatyan that such an approach would have “far reaching
consequences” in the North Caucasus, although the probable results would be
very different than Moscow wants – and would resemble what Gorbachev faced when
he did the same, convinced that as he was that he had no other choice if he
wanted to restore central control.